Okay, so I have never housebroken a dog before, nevermind an adult dog!
My foster is 18 months and has obviously never be inside before. She is also having some spay incontinence so I haven't started working on housebreaking with her yet as I don't want to stress her out.

So far I've been giving her lots of snuggles and praise each and everytime she goes to the bathroom outside. She still will pee in her crate, but I think that's the incontinence and not just peeing for the heck of it since she stands on the side of her crate to stay out of it. I do not reprimand this.

Any suggestions from those who have done this before?

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another." -Anatole France

pretend she is a puppy all over again, and take her out every 20 minutes to start and praise while she is going outside.. keep it up, then slowly increase her time to 30 minutes, etc... if you want to , you can put panties on her to help with the incontinence.. as long as she wont rip them off. you can also make her crate smaller too, so that she cant pee in one spot and lay down in another.. is she on meds for her incontinence? i would say just take it slow and easy and pretend she is a puppy and start from scratch..

No meds right now. She is currently in the smallest crate that would be comfortable for a dog of her size and you can tell that she is very upset when she does have any accident in there

She's going to work with me tomorrow (vet's office) to get her stitches out and have her drain site checked. So far they've been hesitant to put her on any meds for it since it's a muscle control thing and she seems to be regaining control pretty steadily. Only 3 accidents over the weekend. They'd prefer her to fix it herself, which is obviously a longer process, but healthier in the long run.

I may get her some panties, though, so that I'll feel better about her hanging out in the livingroom and such. I've already had to pull out the rug shampooer 3 times. I have very few rugs in the house, but she always seems to aim for those. LOL!

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another." -Anatole France

maybe make her crate a little bigger since you can see she is gettingupset when she has accidents inthere.. since she is building muscle back with time, maybe the panties would work best for now, and a slightly bigger crate too...

Maryellen wrote:maybe make her crate a little bigger since you can see she is gettingupset when she has accidents inthere.. since she is building muscle back with time, maybe the panties would work best for now, and a slightly bigger crate too...

Okay, I'll move her to the next size up for tonight and we'll see how she does. She's held it the last two nights in a row anyway (I am so glad that the kennel is essentially empty right now so I can keep snagging different sized crates from there since I only own huge Greyhound-sized crates myself!!).

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another." -Anatole France

She peed. Of course. LOL! But today I brought her to work with me (a vet's office) and she was in a pretty large crate and she only had one accident. The vet said it may take another couple of weeks (she was horrified at how horrible her spay incision looked, we're still waiting to get the records from the hospital who did it) because her spay was so traumatic. She is such a love, won over everyone at work this afternoon

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another." -Anatole France